The state of American animation

It seems to me today that the animation market is dominated by Japanese anime, now I myself like anime, and even know a bit of Japanese myself.

Ore no nihngo wa heta desuga kokorondeiru.

But, it seems American animation is lagging behind, all that is produced now is comedy shows like Family Guy or The Simpsons, it seems there is very little serious american animation out there.

Any opinions?

Yes, it seems that alot of networks and studios have turned their attentions and profits to Anime. Alot of them even try to mimic the animation style to bring in more viewers, which end up pretty awful.

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[img="]http://epguides.com/SuperRobotMonkeyTeamHyperForceGo/cast.jpg[" alt=""/img]

lisighli I wish people would just would just come up with their own ideas instead of just trying to copy another animation style to look spiffy with pop culture. However, if you've read my recent thread, there are some American-made imitations that may prove benfitial even with traditional animation, like Nickolodeon's up-coming "Avatar: The Last Airbender".

http://www.detnews.com/2004/screens/0412/24/E06-40525.htm

Aside from all of this, American animation is still not dead, Disney still seems to be in the animation works with their previous release Mulan 2 and the new Winnie the Pooh movie ( I know it's a kid's movie but you get my point on animation).

Yeah, that Airbender thing looks pretty cool, and if I was not told it was not made in Japan, I would think it was.

One thing I do not like about anime is it is TOO idealistic in its portrayal of people. It seems everyone is pretty or handsome, and I admit to not knowing much about the proportionas of the Human body, but most anime seem to be way off. Of course, I still do like a select few anime, but not many. I am more into video games to be honest, even if a lot do utilize anime style artwork.

Mochiron, anime ga daisuke desu yo.

One thing I do not like about anime is it is TOO idealistic in its portrayal of people. It seems everyone is pretty or handsome, and I admit to not knowing much about the proportionas of the Human body, but most anime seem to be way off. Of course, I still do like a select few anime, but not many. I am more into video games to be honest, even if a lot do utilize anime style artwork.

This is why I stick to the old 70s to 80s anime styles. All this new stuff that's been coming out lately is just too flashy and colorful looking, back then they used more of pencil sketches instead of all this computer generated stuff.

IMHO American animation may not be dead (at least not yet), but it's damn close to it. We seem to have entered a period of time very similiar to what existed before, say for example Disney's "Fox & the Hound". If you will recall, not much in the way of actual production took place for a period of at least four years prior to the actual release date of this film. Secret of NIMH came out one year after this film and through no fault of its own (under promotion by MGM/UA is the most likely cause), did rather poorly at the box office.
I fully understand the fact that putting together an animated feature, especially one of the caliber of SON is a labor intensive process that can easily take 3~5 years or more to produce. The time and painstaking effort entailed in the creation of such a work as SON is nothing short of staggering in its scale. Still, if American Classical Animation is to survive, then somehow, somewhere, someone must be found who is willing to undertake the challenge, to take the steps necessary to produce the quality animation that we deserve. Otherwise we may truly witness the death of animation in this country for all eternity. That would be a sad day indeed... :cry: :cry:

(under promotion by MGM/UA is the most likely cause), did rather poorly at the box office.

I thought it was because alot of fans of the book didn't like it.

i to would like to see more american aneme but it seems the producers of these shows feel that they would not make the profits they would in a comedy so comedys will take the place beside american aneme is not as popular as japanese. even though i personaly prefer american.

I don't know much about animation, and actually don't watch many cartoons (or TV for that matter), but I do know good work when I see it, and this new anime junk just doesn't fit the bill. :?

--Tzolkin
ﺶﺞﻚﷲ

I don't know much about animation, and actually don't watch many cartoons (or TV for that matter), but I do know good work when I see it, and this new anime junk just doesn't fit the bill.ﺶﺞﻚﷲ

Well that all depends on what anime you watch, it's not all large eyes, pointed noses, and over-sized mouths that move a'bout. There alot of anime motion pictures that capture the human figure almost perfectly and have a great deal of quality animation.

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[img="]http://dan42.com/jinroh/images/misc15.jpg[" alt=""/img]

Some animes can be good and some can be bad, it really all depends on who's animating and writing them. Since there are rarely any anime on TV that possess good animation or story writing, it's best to go to a VHS/DVD shop and look up some titles there.(or if you prefer internet shopping)

(under promotion by MGM/UA is the most likely cause), did rather poorly at the box office.

I thought it was because alot of fans of the book didn't like it.

Eh, I don't think that was the biggest reason for its dissapointing box-office figures. Although it didn't exactly fail at the BO, it didn't take off either. Although I'm sure its dissimilarity from the book may have been a factor for some people, I think most of it is attributed to MGM's botch-up of the promotion of the movie plus it being pitted against the likes of ET and so forth. Production of NIMH was going on at the same time as the MGM/UA merger--NIMH was under UA--and so MGM, who's never really known what to do with animated movies, gets NIMH dropped in its lap. The rest is basically history.

(BTW, if there are factual errors to this, or someone'd like to elaborate on this, feel free).

Well that all depends on what anime you watch, it's not all large eyes, pointed noses, and over-sized mouths that move a'bout. There alot of anime motion pictures that capture the human figure almost perfectly and have a great deal of quality animation.

Some animes can be good and some can be bad, it really all depends on who's animating and writing them. Since there are rarely any anime on TV that possess good animation or story writing, it's best to go to a VHS/DVD shop and look up some titles there.(or if you prefer internet shopping)

Your point is well taken and I agree somewhat, but still even this anime doesn't quite reach the mark that I look for in animation. Sadly I'm beginning to think there may be nothing that can match the quality of NIMH animation...
:(

--Tzolkin
ﺶﺞﻚﷲ

I have to agree with you on that, Tzolkien, Anime is just bad... I hope I don't make alot of enemies for what I'm about to say, so I apologize in advance to all of you that like japanimation, and I advise that you perhaps shouldn't read this if you're a huge anime fan. If you do, please keep an open mind and don't keep your emotions on your sleeve or get all indignant and defensive.


...But as for Japanimation, it's taken hold here in America, no doubt about that, and it's understandable, in the face of the abyss that traditional American animation seems to have fallen into... where once great popular action shows on tv ruled, like Transformers, or Ninja Turtles, less-action oriented, more childish, silly comedy shows took over in popularity... over time, people grew tired of even these, and shows such as animaniacs and pinky and the brain fell out of favor. Young American audiences needed an action cartoon show again, and American animators just couldn't pull it off, merely bringing back the same cornball old comic book characters in spiffed-up new cartoon shows really no different from the old ones, such as batman and superman ad-nauseum. ...then, some anime came through and debut, probably just as an experiment, and its popularity caught on very quickly.


...However, I never took a liking to anime myself, unlike many of my friends that did.

In my opinion, it's absolutely horrible, archaic animation, full of bizzare, hideous imagery and styles and artwork, almost insulting to the human form, stories and plotlines which almost always seem crack-cocaine-inspired, and not just that, but also often very uncalled for language, adult content and violence. On top of that, alot of it is culturally offensive, as I've cleary seen obvious sexism expressed in many popular Japanese cartoons

"Get out of my way, you stupid girl!" --Inuyasha once said to a submissive female character,
Inuyasha, by the way, is supposedly a half-man, half-"dog demon" hybrid... try and wrap your mind around that one! ...How drunk would his mom have had to have been?

Yeah, I could never find anything possibly entertaining out of the wierd bizzareness of Janapenese cartoons, and not to mention the animation is atrociously cheap and half-assed.

Does a repeating animation of two fluctuating differently sized large pink circles on a person's face look like the mechanics of articulately flowing speech to you? It doesn't to me, in fact, hardly anything seems to move at all in japanimation, characters and backgrounds are frozen solid most of the time, and oftentimes they'll just scan over a still panorama of a scene, no matter how much action is supposedly going on, as if they're showing you an artist's rendition of it or something, all the while a cacophany of sound effects playing, as if something is actually going on.

And what's with a character that jumps up to hit, or slash someone else, only to show the person in a frozen pose in midair, as a bright flashy background liable to give someone seizures whooshes past behind them at a million miles per hour? What the hell is that supposed to look like?

Oh man, and don't even get me started about their bizzarre emotional mannerisms, like when a character gets mad at another and their head expands to the size of a blimp while they yell at another, and the background changes to a bunch of pop-art, and their mouth turns into a giant pink fluctuating lima bean, and a black cross-shape apears on their forehead... oh yeah, and every time a character says something to another that might be slightly unexpected, why does the other character faint and fall over? ...pure abstract nonsensical wierdo crap.

...oh yeah, and the storylines all seem to revolve around the same fixed agendas.

A. giant humanoid robots that attack cities or each other....

B. super-godlike humans with ultra abilities such as throwing lame "energy balls" at each other... or with other such supernatural fighting abilities, using magical samurai swords and such...

C. Jaded, overused western drama themes twisted and modified slightly, with wierd space battles, worldwide wars, screwy detectives, etc... etc...

D. some sort of desirable collectible item, one with many different varieties and models, which the main character must attain as many of as possible and work through getting and ascending in "rank". (this, I suspect, is merely put out alongside a toy product in order to generate a commercial profit both from the toy and from the hyped-up crappy cartoon show that pretty much just advertises that toy.)

E. Is is just me, or do japanese seem to have a pervasive anthropomorphic, furry-type culture? almost every anime cartoon has some sort of half-human half-animal hybrid character, which I find just too bizzarre to swallow.

...along with all that, there's creepy, Infeminine male role models, giant-saucer-sized sparkly eyes, miniscule noses that are nothing but a tiny vertical checkmark, risque, if not sexually obscene themes and imagery, still life characters that "teleport" to different parts of the screen in white streaky flashes, EXTREMELY ridiculous looking hairstyles, some of which look exactly like a bunch of bananas stuck on someone's head, characters that never have any expression or personality but just pose and scowl at everyone,

...long, drawn-out plots and storylines that get absolutely nowhere, even through the course of hundreds of life-wasting episodes...

...don't make me go on!!! I'm sorry, but anime is the worst thing to hit American pop-culture since... uh... well, I can't think of anything worse... Bring back ninja turtles, or x-men, or some of the other great, moderate-quality action animation shows I grew up watching... is that too much to ask? American Animation in its better years was the pinnacle of quality and good, value-filled entertainment, and I don't think we should ever look to Japan in hopes of something decent in the face of this American animation depression. We just need to look for better overhere.

...now, aside from all this criticism, I saw that 'Airbender' cartoon trailer on the Nickelodeon website and I have to admit that it's one exception. The animation on that was quite excellent and wonderful, and was not too bizzarre or strange looking. I am actually looking slightly forward to its debut.

I think you just reminded me why I don't watch much TV anymore. :?
Everything you said of anime rings true, especially about the backgrounds for some of the scenes giving people seizures. In some cases, those scenes have actually caused epileptic seizures... too many cases to be just coincidence.
I might check that Airbender cartoon out since everyone seems to like it. Well, when I find the time at least...

--Tzolkin
ﺶﺞﻚﷲ

In my opinion, it's absolutely horrible, archaic animation, full of bizzare, hideous imagery and styles and artwork, almost insulting to the human form

Well, we all have our different art styles and ways of drawing, it's not like we were all born with an artistic mind, a pencil in one hand, and an eraser in the other. Just because a certain animaton came from another country does not necessarily mean it's all the same thing. Sure it may seem that way, but when you look at it, there are many different types of japanimations out there that are really descent, just don't pay attention to the kind of shows and series you find on TV, if you want animation, good character models, and story, try looking for the more popular theatrical anime titles; like "Steamboy" for instance (trailer is in japanese):

http://www.apple.com/jp/quicktime/trailers/toho/steamboy_large.html

stories and plotlines which almost always seem crack-cocaine-inspired, a

What, just because a character had a cigerette in his mouth it's atuomatically inspired by drugs? The're just being realistic with the ideas of the invironment they put the characters in. Like if a it took place in an ally or a bar, what would you have all the adults to be doing?

often very uncalled for language, adult content and violence. On top of that, alot of it is culturally offensive, as I've cleary seen obvious sexism expressed in many popular Japanese cartoons

"Get out of my way, you stupid girl!" --Inuyasha once said to a submissive female character,
Inuyasha, by the way, is supposedly a half-man, half-"dog demon" hybrid... try and wrap your mind around that one! ...How drunk would his mom have had to have been?

Alot of this you'll have to blame on the American editing networks that dub them. The line from Inuyasha was originally supposed to be "Stay out of my way! I know what I'm doing!", but was changed to what you previously stated, probably to make the show look "tuff". As a matter of fact, I looked through every one of my animes and watched them both subtitled and dubbed and compared them. The scripts were almost completely different; from simple words that had been changed to large curse words, and speeches and sentences that either had nothing to do with the orginal or were just merely 50% different. And sometimes it's not just the scripts, plot and story are also changed in the process.

And if you want to bring sotryline into this discusson; Inuyasha's mother met a dog demon (in a human form) and fell in love with him.

As for adult content and violence, hey, that happens, but if you want someting that is less adult, try looking for something below the 16+ and 18+ labels.

Yeah, I could never find anything possibly entertaining out of the wierd bizzareness of Janapenese cartoons, and not to mention the animation is atrociously cheap and half-assed.

Like I said above, it's not all the same, . Don't rely on what you see on TV so much, try going out and acutally pick a title that you think maybe descent.

Does a repeating animation of two fluctuating differently sized large pink circles on a person's face look like the mechanics of articulately flowing speech to you? It doesn't to me, in fact, hardly anything seems to move at all in japanimation, characters and backgrounds are frozen solid most of the time, and oftentimes they'll just scan over a still panorama of a scene, no matter how much action is supposedly going on, as if they're showing you an artist's rendition of it or something, all the while a cacophany of sound effects playing, as if something is actually going on.

Well sure in alot of series they do that, but many of them were just low budget shows that died off in Japan and brought over to America, and some of these shows date way back to 1985 and just suddenly came on American TV in 2001. As for the other stuff, it's just their way of tradition, they've been doing stuff like this since late 60s.

And what's with a character that jumps up to hit, or slash someone else, only to show the person in a frozen pose in midair, as a bright flashy background liable to give someone seizures whooshes past behind them at a million miles per hour? What the hell is that supposed to look like?

Come on, ever read a comic book or watched the old Superman cartoons, it's no different than any of these. It's just showing there's action taking place in a scene. As matter of fact alot of America's old classical cartoons had this type of animation sequence like Felix the cat and many others.

Oh man, and don't even get me started about their bizzarre emotional mannerisms, like when a character gets mad at another and their head expands to the size of a blimp while they yell at another, and the background changes to a bunch of pop-art, and their mouth turns into a giant pink fluctuating lima bean, and a black cross-shape apears on their forehead... oh yeah, and every time a character says something to another that might be slightly unexpected, why does the other character faint and fall over? ...pure abstract nonsensical wierdo crap.

Just the many different ways of having your characters experience emotions, like a cartoon character that pops his eyes out in excitement or how their heads extend to unbeleivable size as they get mad. It's no different than how comical cartoons like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck made many audiences laugh. Have some humor for once in your life.

...oh yeah, and the storylines all seem to revolve around the same fixed agendas.

A. giant humanoid robots that attack cities or each other....

B. super-godlike humans with ultra abilities such as throwing lame "energy balls" at each other... or with other such supernatural fighting abilities, using magical samurai swords and such...

C. Jaded, overused western drama themes twisted and modified slightly, with wierd space battles, worldwide wars, screwy detectives, etc... etc...

D. some sort of desirable collectible item, one with many different varieties and models, which the main character must attain as many of as possible and work through getting and ascending in "rank". (this, I suspect, is merely put out alongside a toy product in order to generate a commercial profit both from the toy and from the hyped-up crappy cartoon show that pretty much just advertises that toy.)

E. Is is just me, or do japanese seem to have a pervasive anthropomorphic, furry-type culture? almost every anime cartoon has some sort of half-human half-animal hybrid character, which I find just too bizzarre to swallow.

Well many people have different ideas on what they would have in their own story, it's just that once someone comes up with an idea, it is later inspired by another writer who want to try the same thing, or maybe to show he can do better etc. Some of the writers try to be different, but there's alot of others out there who may have the same thing or something that's like it just a little bit different. It's usually just competition and who can get to it first.

Yes, some animes were made to advertise a toy or some kind of card game. This is all to make more money, which seems to be doing it's job considering how many kids buy Yu-Gi-Oh and pokemon merhcandise. But sometimes it's just a show that ends up on a popular toy-line like Transformers.

As for the furry/anthro organisms idea on certain shows, that's all just imagination, like how Star Trek combines humanity with other alien creatures or some "fantasy land" full of small dwarfs and flying monkeys like the Wizard of OZ. All amazing ideas that pop out of creative minds, whether it be from story book, cartoon, or movie.

...along with all that, there's creepy, Infeminine male role models, giant-saucer-sized sparkly eyes, miniscule noses that are nothing but a tiny vertical checkmark, risque, if not sexually obscene themes and imagery, still life characters that "teleport" to different parts of the screen in white streaky flashes, EXTREMELY ridiculous looking hairstyles, some of which look exactly like a bunch of bananas stuck on someone's head, characters that never have any expression or personality but just pose and scowl at everyone

This is pretty much of a repeat of your previous statement about the character expressions and character models. Same thing, people have different ideas of drawing, just humor to make you laugh, no different from our own classical cartoons, and so on and so forth.

American Animation in its better years was the pinnacle of quality and good, value-filled entertainment, and I don't think we should ever look to Japan in hopes of something decent in the face of this American animation depression. We just need to look for better overhere.

Like all of what I've been mentioning over again, it's not really different from ours. We make a cartoon with wacky cartoon expression for comedy and so does Japan, we make serious comic book styled action cartoons and so does Japan, we come up with many different imaginative ideas for our animated shows and..so does Japan.

Somebody may have already stated this and I know I'm a little late for the topic but here goes: There are two basic catagories that anime falls into. Shonin and Shojo. Basically they translate into "Boy" anime and "Girl" anime.

Obviously boy anime focuses mostly on action and adventure and things like love and romance are kept to a secondary. Girl anime is the opposite. There are also inherent styles associated with each class. The girl anime usually has the huge heads and enormous twinkling glittering eyes that the camera seems to alway have closups on.

There are some anime out there that I think is very very good. Ghost in the shell 1 and 2 and Akira are a few. Also the original Robotech is another. That series came out back in 85 (and ironically has that many episodes . . . HA!) I remember watching it as a kid, that and Vultron. A lot of later anime tried to be like them. Shame shame.

I do believe that the anime thing is getting carried away. I really don't like the huge eye, tiny mouth thing. It seems to me more and more anime is becomming a contest between who make the best anime character rather then who can make the best character period, to include all things such as life value and form all the way to personality. However, good work can be found in anime. Basically IMO it boils down to style and preference. There is a value in each that is found only within that piece. I wouldn't try to find that special "NIMH" effect that I illuded to in another post in an anime. Nor would I look for something intrinsically anime in anything like NIMH.

There are some animations that I hold in classes all their own. Secret of NIMH is a champion example of one of them. Some others are anime titles, a few I've mentioned already. I remember back in the day coming home from school and watching GI-JOE. I really enjoyed those as well.

My drawings have a strange mix of trying to be cartoony and very lifelike at the same time. It can be highly frustrating when trying produce a certian form or pose. I don't consider myself terribly great at it but good enough to know what I'm doing and have a style about it.

Well, there's my two bits. Sorry If I restated anything obvious.

You did great Dragon, you wrote it all down better than I did.

Well it seems my topic has changed into a bit of a debate. Anyways, as I already stated I like some anime, but not a lot. I too fin dmost of it pretty bad, and I like video games more, albeit most of the video games I like are the ones from Japan. heh my all time favorite has to be Final Fantasy 9. While it does have tons of the anthromorphine creatures Grizzlycoon mentioned, it is still really cool. :)

One of the animal races is even a race of Anthromorhine mice called Burmecians, and the character named Freya Crescent who joins your party is one and she is my favorite character. :)

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EDIT: Maxx, when Grizzlycon said drug inspired plots I think he meant that the some of the plots in anime make no sense what so ever, FLCL comes to mind as one.

Oh, and if I had the the money and talent too, I would set up an animation studio to produce good american animation again, but I have neither. :(

EDIT: Maxx, when Grizzlycon said drug inspired plots I think he meant that the some of the plots in anime make no sense what so ever, FLCL comes to mind as one.

Ah, thanks for pointing that out. Sorry for my misundertsanding Grizzlycon.

Oh, and if I had the the money and talent too, I would set up an animation studio to produce good american animation again, but I have neither. :(

Oh, don't we all. You know, I'm surprised how some people actually get into the animation business, with all these low quality shows popping up all of the sudden, with poor writing with plot holes in every turn, and artwork that looks alot like my pitiful attempts at drawing. And yet I hear alot of dissapointed artists and writers were rejected because their work wasn't good enough for the networks. I just wonder what kind of quality these networks are really craving for.

The network business is also alot about who you know. It's kind of like a good ol' boy club.

Network exec- Hey Jim! What brings you here?

Jim- Oh what's goin on, haven't seen you in a long time. Me and my crew are wanting to try out a new cartoon for this network, but...umm...well my drawing skills aren't that good and Pete's writing ability-

Network exec- No problem I think we can squeeze you in.

Jim- Really?! I mean it's probably going to lack alo-

Network exec- No, No you're all fine, go right on ahead.

Jim- Gee, thanks

Network exec- Welcome. Good luck with your project.

liCarry and John walk inli

Network exec- And who might you two be?

Carry- Oh...well...my name is Carry I do character designs, and this here is John, he works on the stories.

John- Hi.

Carry- We just got our degrees from college and we're willing to tribute a new cartoon for this network you have here.

Network exec- Well I'm afraid it's not that easy, you see, we have alot of cartoonists in training who come here every day on the hour and I must say very few make it in here. A great deal of quality and work is needed for this job, you realize that don't you?

Carry- Oh yes sir, but me and John have been working on projects ever since we were 12 years old and have been practicing very hard since then. I think we're more than ready for the job.

Netowrk exec- I see, well we're going to need a full layout of your story, character designs and drawing skill.

John- We have that already taken care of. Here's my script and these are Carry's designs.

liExecutive picks up the script and sketches and looks at them with a serious expressionli

Network exec- Hmmmm,..will you excuse me for a second?

John and Carry- No, not at all.

liExecutive takes sketch's into another office. A few minutes pass and later comes back outli

Network exec- I'm sorry but your work isn't exactly what we're looking for. The exit is down the hall to your left, where you came.

John and carry-..............

Yep, that about sums it up. Don't forget the part where the network exec throws about 10 mil at Jim for "funding."

Oh yes,..how could I have missed THAT?

And to think -that- is what they call fair business...

--Tzolkin
ﺶﺞﻚﷲ

i dont know i like all aneme each with thier own unique story line

Domo! I'm not really an animé fan. But I guess I'm jealous about them that they are so successful. I really prefer American cartoons. Th ereason is probably because Japanese animé is not as "safe" as American cartoons. Like some animé movies I see blood quite often (Well NIMH does have some blood in it. But not as much as animé). Another reason is that I am a very big Disney fan and it's so different from the Japanese style.

There's my opinion...

I posted a separate reply 'cause i wanted people to read this...

Has anyone heard of "The GokuSen?"
It started as a manga, then went on a drama on TV, then on a japanese midnight cartoon. I've researched about it in English and it seems that it goes in the anime genre. I've only seen the drama version (Which is a very, very cool one!) but has anybody heard of it???

It's a story about a girl who becomes a highschool teacher of some "bad-boys." But her secret identity is the grand daughter of a Yakuza family. I don't know about the manga or the anime, but the drama is really dramatic and it actually made me cry. (I'm not lying!)